When One Is Holding A Hammer ... Part 1 - by DavidXYu

It didn’t start that way. At first, having just turned three, he was quite shy. Holding onto his mother, he would peek at me, a new stranger entering his life. At some point, apparently, in that developing little mind, came what was probably acceptance. This larger human, not in my family, is someone who I see with some regular occurrence. With each meeting, the surprisal is reduced and familiarity increased. “Look, it’s David, he lives upstairs!” Mother would say. Thus “David from Upstairs” has been conceptualized. Or rather, conceptualizing. With each “David!” he exclaims, he’s solidifying the verbal signifier “David” being connected to the human in front of him, quite literally “real-izing” my object permanence – as he has done with mom, dad, and eventually many many more people, objects, concepts, etc. Likewise, my mother tells me that when I was young, one of my favorite activities was sitting by the road in front of our apartment complex and pointing out the different types of ca

It didn’t start that way. At first, having just turned three, he was quite shy. Holding onto his mother, he would peek at me, a new stranger entering his life. At some point, apparently, in that developing little mind, came what was probably acceptance. This larger human, not in my family, is someone who I see with some regular occurrence. With each meeting, the surprisal is reduced and familiarity increased. “Look, it’s David, he lives upstairs!” Mother would say. Thus “David from Upstairs” has been conceptualized. Or rather, conceptualizing. With each “David!” he exclaims, he’s solidifying t